The modern world gives us a tremendous variety and range of options and choices. Cable and satellite television delivers hundreds of different television channels each carrying a different program. The radio dial is crowded with different radio stations offering all kinds of music, news, talk, and anything else one may care to listen to. The corner convenience store carries newspapers from around the country, and a well stocked newsstand allows you to choose between hundreds of magazines and publications about nearly every subject you can think of. Merchandise from all corners of the world is readily available at the shopping mall or by mail order. You can pay by check, in cash, or using any number of different kinds of credit cards and ATM cards.
This tremendous variety is good, but it also presents problems. Sometimes, it is hard or inefficient for us to find what we want and need because there are too many things to evaluate and choose from, and they are often located in too many places. We can waste a lot of time searching for the things we need or want at the right price, with the rights features, and at a particular time.
Sometimes, we never find things that satisfy what we feel we need or want. This happens when we don't know what to look for, how to look for it, or don't have the necessary assistance or tools to search successfully. For example, we may not know the best way of looking for something. Sometimes, we know what we are looking for but can't express or articulate it in ways that help us look. And sometimes, we don't even know what we are looking for. You may know you need something, know its missing, but never really know how to communicate to others what you are looking for. For example, someone who speaks only English may never find resources using Japanese or Spanish. In general, we often don't have the time or resources to look for all the things that would give us the most benefit or make us the most satisfied.
It's Hard To Find Mass Media Things You Want Or Need
FIG. 1A shows, as one example, how frustrating it can be to find anything to watch on the hundreds of television channels that may be available. The man in FIG. 1A spends a lot of time "channel surfing," trying to find something he is interested in watching. He may be moderately interested in golf, but may not like the particular golf tournament or golf players being broadcast at 7 o'clock on a particular channel. After flipping through other channels, he might think an action movie looks interesting only to find out after watching it for a while that he isn't really interested in it after all. A documentary on horses also seems interesting at first, but he finds it boring after watching it awhile because it doesn't give him the kind of information he is interested in. The whole process can be frustrating and he may feel he wasted a lot of time. FIG. 1B shows the man getting so frustrated at the wasted time and energy that he thinks that maybe watching television is just not worth it. What the man really needs is a powerful yet efficient way to find those things that most satisfy his desires--that is, match his needs and/or his interests.
Our Mail Overloads Us With Things We Don't Want or Need
The same thing can happen with information sent to us in the mail. It can be fun to receive some kinds of mail, such as personal letters, or magazines and catalogs on topics of personal interest. Certain other mail, such as bills, may not be fun but are usually important. Unfortunately, our mailboxes are typically overflowing with yet another kind of mail commonly referred to as "junk mail." The person in FIG. 2 finds his mailbox stuffed to the overflowing point with mail he never asked for and has absolutely no interest in. Most of this junk mail ends up unread and in the trash. However, it can take a long time to sort through all this mail to be sure you are only throwing out only the junk mail and not the good mail you are interested in or need. For example, it's sometimes hard to distinguish credit card bills from offers for new credit cards you don't need or want. Wouldn't it be useful if your mail could be automatically "cleaned" of the mail you had no interest in and you received only the mail you wanted or needed?
Sorting through things to identify things you might want, then selecting what you actually want, can be a frustrating and time consuming experience. For example, it wastes the time of the person who receives the junk mail, and it also wastes the time, money and effort of the people who spend their money to send mail to people hoping that they will buy their products.
As frustrating as finding and selecting may be to consumers, they often create even greater problems for businesses and people who want to locate or provide information, goods and services. It is often said, that in the world of business, "Information is Power" and "efficiency is the key to success." To find or sell the most relevant or useful information and to provide the ability to most efficiently allow business to operate at its best, we need easy-to-use tools that can help us navigate, locate, and select what matches our interests. In the modern world, it is often difficult to find out what different people like, and to supply people with the opportunity to select the best or most satisfying choices.
Past attempts outside the computer world to match up people with information, goods and/or services have had limited success. For example, attempts to "target" mass mailings may increase the chance that they will go to people who are interested in them, but the entire process is still very wasteful and inefficient. It is considered a good success rate to match the interests of only a few percent of the recipients of "junk" mail. Telemarketing campaigns that use the telephone to reach potential consumers can be very expensive, very annoying to consumers who are not interested in the products being marketed, and very costly and inefficient. A much more ideal situation for all concerned is enabling businesses to send information only to individual consumers likely to find the information interesting, desirable, convincing, and/or otherwise useful. That way, businesses save time and money and consumers aren't unproductively hassled by information, phone calls, junk mail, junk e-mail and the like. However, right now it is extremely difficult to accomplish this goal, and so businesses continue to annoy consumers while wasting their own time, money, and effort.
Because of the Vast Amount of Information Available, Even Systems that Provide a High Degree of Organization May Be Difficult to Use or Access
You can find yourself wasting a lot of time finding things--even in places where finding things is supposed to be easy. For example, a library is a place where you can find all sorts of useful information but can also waste a lot of time trying to find what you are looking for. Modern libraries can be huge, containing tens or even hundreds of thousands or millions of different books, magazines, newspapers, video tapes, audio tapes, disks, and other publications. Most libraries have an electronic or manual card catalog that classifies and indexes all of those books and other materials. This classification system is useful, but it often has significant limitations.
For example, normally a card catalog will classify materials based only on a few characteristics (for example, general subject, author and title). The boy in FIG. 3 is looking for information on American League baseball teams during World War II for a high school report. The card catalog led to the general subject of baseball and other sports, but, looking at the catalog, he can't identify any books that seem to provide the specific information he wants to see, so he must rely on books classified as "histories of sports" or "histories of baseball." He can spend lots of time looking through the books on the shelves, going back to the card catalog, and going back to the shelves before he finds a reference that's reasonably helpful. He may need to go ask an expert (the librarian) who is familiar with the books the library has on sports and may know where to look for the information. Even then, the boy may need to flip through many different books and magazines, and look in many different places within the library before he finds the information he is looking for.
Finding Products You Want or Need Can Be Very Difficult and Time Consuming
The same kind of frustrating experience can happen when you shop for a particular kind of item. While some people enjoy shopping, and have fun seeing what is in various stores, many people dislike spending time shopping, searching for the best or most affordable item. And sometimes even people who like to shop don't have the time to shop for a specific item.
For example, the man in FIG. 4 goes into a shopping mall looking for a tie to fit very tall people. He didn't wear a tie to work that day, but, at the last minute, an important meeting was scheduled for later that day and he needs to dress up. The shopping mall has a large variety of stores, each selling a range of merchandise. But the man may only have a short time to look. For example, he may be on his lunch break, and needs to get back to work soon. He can't spend a lot of time shopping. He may therefore need to rely on tools to help him identify where he wants to buy the tie. Perhaps he uses a mall directory that classifies the different stores in terms of what kinds of merchandise they sell (for example, clothing, books, housewares, etc.). Perhaps he asks at the malls help desk staffed by "experts" who know what is available in the shopping mall. But even these resources may not tell him where to buy Italian silk ties that are discounted and cost $20. So he does the best he can with the available resources.
These Problems Are Worse in the Digital World
The electronic or digital world offers a rapidly growing, vast array of electronically published products and services. For example, computer superstores have a dizzying array of different software products. Furthermore, music is now published primarily in digital form on optical disks, and video will soon be published that way too. And, of particular interest related to certain of the inventions described by this document, the Internet now has millions of home pages with an overwhelmingly variety and quantity of digital information, and, these millions of home pages, in turn, point or "link" to millions of other web pages as well.
Today, for example, you can use the Internet to:
read electronic newspapers, books and magazines and see them on your computer screen; PA1 get music in electronic form and play it using your computer; PA1 send and receive electronic mail all over the world; PA1 download reports and other information compiled by governments, companies, industries, universities, and individuals; PA1 watch videos and animations; PA1 play games with "cyber-friends" located around the world; PA1 chat with individuals and groups who share at least some interests in common; PA1 participate in "virtual reality" worlds, games, and/or experiences; PA1 (offer to) buy, and/or (offer to) sell nearly anything; and PA1 conduct electronic transactions and commerce. PA1 cost ceilings, PA1 redistribution rights (e.g., limits on the quantity that may be redistributed), PA1 modification rights, PA1 class related usage rights, PA1 category related usage rights, PA1 sovereignty based licensing and taxation fees, PA1 import and export regulations, and PA1 reporting and/or privacy rights (you don't want to report back to the product provider the actual identity of your end users and/or customers. PA1 price, PA1 republishing (redistribution) rights, PA1 rights to extract portions, PA1 certified usable in certain sovereignties (e.g., pornographic content not allowed in Saudi Arabia), PA1 size, PA1 format, etc., PA1 use and reuse administrative requirements (e.g., which clearinghouses are acceptable to rightsholders, what is the requirement for reporting usage information--is the name of your customer required, or only the use class(es) or none--is advertising embedded), and PA1 other features. PA1 things that match your interests; PA1 things that match your lifestyle; PA1 things that match your habits; PA1 things that match your personality; PA1 things you can afford and/or accept your preferred payment method; PA1 things that help you in your work; PA1 things that help you in your play; PA1 things that help you to help others; PA1 things that other people who are similar to you have found helpful, PA1 things that fulfill the commercial objective or requirements of your business activities; and PA1 things that will make you happy and fulfilled. PA1 model, PA1 color, PA1 options package, PA1 availability, and PA1 discounts resulting from the consumer's membership in certain classes (such as membership in the American Association of Retired Persons, membership in the American Automobile Association, and being a graduate of Stanford University). PA1 consumer information; PA1 computer information; PA1 business information; PA1 entertainment information; PA1 other content information; PA1 information about physical products; PA1 all other kinds of information. PA1 content rights; PA1 privacy rights; PA1 governmental and societal rights; PA1 provider rights; PA1 distributor rights; PA1 consumer rights; PA1 workflow rights; PA1 other value chain participant rights; PA1 work flow rights; PA1 business and personal rights and processes of all kinds. PA1 budget, PA1 pricing PA1 redistribution PA1 location (of party, item, etc.) PA1 privacy PA1 identity authenticity and/or specificity PA1 any other parameter information. PA1 topical classification such as described by conventional library classification systems, PA1 commercial characterizations--including commercial parameter data such as pricing, size, quality, specific redistribution rights, etc., PA1 creator (e.g., a publisher or manufacturer), distributor, societal, user, and other participant interests information, PA1 information generated by automated profiling of any and all of such parties or collections of parties, PA1 matching (including electronically negotiating a match) between the interests of any of such parties, PA1 where appropriate, the use of statistical procedures, expert systems, and artificial intelligence tools for profiling creation and/or analysis, matching, and/or negotiation. PA1 topical identification, for example, such as information represented in typical library subject and/or author and/or catalog and/or keyword search and retrieval information systems; PA1 any commercial requirements, associated with the use of electronic information (and/or to products, including non-electronic products, and/or to any service), including information embodied in encrypted rules (controls and/or parameter data) governing rights in electronic value chain and electronic interaction contexts, and further including information guaranteed for integrity; PA1 any information descriptive of an available resource (which may include any information, product, and/or service, whether available in electronic and/or physical forms) such as: the quality of a digital product as evaluated and ranked and/or otherwise specified by one or more third parties and/or independent third parties (e.g., Consumer Reports, a trusted friend, and/or a professional advisor), the size of a product, length in time in business of a service or in the market of a product, a product's or service's market share, and/or subject governmentally and/or other societally imposed rules and/or integrity guaranteed descriptions, including any associated regulatory requirements, such as societal requirements granting and/or reporting access to information, for example, information on how to create a nuclear bomb to a confidential government auditing agency (this allowing free access to information while protecting societal rights); PA1 any information descriptive of a user and/or department and/or organization and/or class of users and/or departments and/or organizations (including, for example, such descriptive information encrypted and/or guaranteed for integrity) wherein such information may include, for example, name, physical and/or network and/or cyber-wide logical network location, organizational and/or departmental memberships, demographic information, credit and/or trustworthiness information, and profile preference and usage history information, including any generated profile information reflecting underlying preferences, and/or classes based on said descriptive information and/or profiles. PA1 Enables highly efficient provision of classes of information, entertainment, and/or services to classes of individuals and/or entities that have (and/or may obtain) the right(s) to such information and are likely to find identified information interesting, useful, and/or entertaining. PA1 The present inventions also provide systems and methods for efficiently determining class hierarchies, classification schemes, categories, and/or category schemes and/or the assignment of objects, persons and/or things to said class hierarchies, classification schemes, categories, and/or category schemes using at least some rights management information. PA1 Helps systems, groups, and/or individuals classify, locate, and/or obtain specific information and/or classes of information made available through so-called "publish and subscribe" systems and methods using, among other things, subject-based addressing and/or messaging-based protocol layers. PA1 Provides fundamentally important commercial and societal rules based filtering to identify desired electronic information and/or electronic information containers through the use of classification structures, profiling technology, and matching mechanisms that harness the vast information opportunities in cyberspace by matching the information needs of users against commercial and/or societal rules related to the use of available information resources, including, for example, commercial and/or societal consequences of digital information use imposed as provider requirements and specified through the use of, and enforced by the use of, a trusted rights management system such as described in "Ginter et al". PA1 Enables content creators and/or distributors to efficiently "stock the shelves" of retail electronic content outlets and similar merchanisers (both electronic and hard goods) with products and/or services most likely to be purchased and/or used by the customers of such merchanisers. This includes both identifying and "stocking" the most desirable products and/or other user desired resources and optimally presenting such products and/or other resources in a manner optimized for specific users and/or user classes. PA1 Matching may be based on history of matching, that is, matching derived at least in part from previous matching, one non-exhaustive example of which includes learned matching for increasing efficiency. PA1 Enables matching for value chains where the matching is against a plurality of co-participating value chain parties requirements and/or profiles against match opportunities, and/or matching by matches comprised of match input and/or aggregation of match rule sets of providers used to "dock" with one or more user needs, interests, requirements match sets. PA1 Helps match persons and/or things using fuzzy matching, artificial intelligence (e.g., expert systems), and other methods that that match using plural match sets from providers and/or receivers. PA1 Makes search easier by using smart agents that match at least in part using at least one class. PA1 Helps bring buyers and sellers together through cross matching, where both parties offer to provide and/or receive content and/or physical goods for consideration, including barter matching and negotiated barter and other kinds of matching. PA1 Helps potential customers find those members (e.g., objects such as digital information containers) of any one or more classes of content most useful, entertaining, and/or interesting to them. PA1 Facilitates organizations securely and efficiently acquiring and distributing for internal use certain classes of content available from external providers and/or more securely and/or efficiently managing classes of their own content, including being able to authorize certain classes of employees to use specified classes of internal and/or external content. PA1 Efficiently supporting matching between users and digital information where participants in a chain of handling and control have specified rules and usage consequences for such digital information that may depend on class membership, for example, on class(es) of content and/or class(es) of value chain participants and/or classes of electronic events, wherein such participants include, for example, users and/or participants contributing rules and consequences. PA1 Enables first individuals and/or organzations to locate efficiently other individuals, organizations, products, and/or services who have certain characteristics that corresponds to such first individuals' and/or organizations' interests, including interests generated by profiling information locally gathered through local event auditing at a VDE installation. PA1 Facilitates businesses informing a customer about things of special interest to her or him, such as classes of goods, services, and/or content, including directing such information to a customer at least in part based on profiling information locally gathered at a VDE installation through local event auditing at a VDE installation. PA1 Allows trading companies to match suppliers of certain classes of goods and/or services with those who desire to purchase and/or use those classes of goods and/or services, wherein such matches may include fulling a commercial business interaction and may further include one or more sequences of matches and/or nested matches (a sequence and/or grouping of matches within a given organization or group, wherein such matches may be required to occur in a certain order and/or participate along with other matches in a group of matches before a given match is fulfilled). PA1 Enhances equity portfolio management by making easier for traders to identify those equities having certain desired characteristics, such as belonging to the class of equities that will have the greatest positive effect on the value of the trader's portfolio given certain classes of information and assumptions. Such matches may take into account information external to the fulfilment of a given trade, for example, one or more certain other market or specific variable thresholds must be met before an equity is traded, such as a certain rise in the an index stock value of, and/or revenue of, certain one or more network hardware suppliers before a certain quantity of equity is purchased at a certain price for stock of a certain network hardware supplier raw network component manufacturer, and wherein, for example, such determinations can be performed highly efficiently at a user VDE installation as the point of control, where such node receives such trusted information in, for example, VDE containers, as is necessary for a control decision to occur to purchase such equity of such network hardware supplier raw component manufacturer. PA1 Makes easier automated foreign currency exchange by enabling currency traders to identify members of the class of possible trades and/or conversions that are likely to produce the best returns and/or minimize losses. PA1 Helps consumers and organizations manage their affairs more efficiently and effectively and helps providers of services by automatically matching users with services that meet certain specified criteria, such as, for example, U.S. and Swiss banks offering the highest interest rates on certain time based classes of bank deposit instruments. PA1 Enables distributers of software and other content to identify one or more classes of users who are most likely to be interested in purchasing or otherwise using certain classes of software. PA1 Enables rightsholders to employ rules and/or usage consequences dependent on membership in one or more classes where class membership may be indicated by posession of a special digital document called a "certificate." PA1 Enables rightsholders to employ rules and/or usage consequences at least partially dependent on roles and responsibilities within an organization, where those roles and responsibilities may be indicated by posession of a digital certificate, digital membeship card, and/or other digital credential. PA1 Facilitates more efficient automation of manufacturing and other workflow processes by, for example, matching certain manufacturing steps and/or processes with performance parameter data associated with available classes of equipment capable of performing those steps and/or processes. PA1 Makes easier the administration and enforcement of government and/or societal rights by, for example, providing matching means for automatically applying certain classes of tax rules to appropriate classes of sales and other transactions. PA1 Enables altering the presentation of information and/or other content depending on the matching between preferences of the user and one or more classes of content being presented. PA1 Enables processing or altering (narrowcasting) of an event (e.g., the presentation of information and/or other content), for example, dynamically adjusting the content of an event, in response to a matching among the preferences and/or reactions of a user and/or user group, one or more classes of content being processed through one or more events, one or more classes of one or more users participating in and/or otherwise employing the one or more events, and/or event controls (i.e., rules and/or parameter data). PA1 Allows the rules and usage consequences and the presentation of information to vary according to the difficulty of the information, including, for example, adjusting the difficulty of an electronic game so that it is neither too frustratingly difficult nor too easy to use. PA1 Enables a user to efficiently locate content in one or more particular classes, where class is defined at least in part by weighted topical classification, where, for example, a document or other object is classified in one or more categories where at least one category reflects the absolute or relative attention given to that class in the object being classified. PA1 Facilitates users' creation of a new document from parts of two or more documents, where at least one of such parts is identified and/or retrieved based upon matching the part's membership in one or more classes identified by trusted, commercial controls employed through the use of a rights management system. PA1 Enables users to search for, locate, and use only those parts of a document that belong to one or more specified classes, including those parts having certain commercial controls, for example, reflecting acceptable usage restrictions and/or pricing. PA1 Enhances search and retrieval by creating new classes of content discriptors that incorporate various dispirate standards for content description and/or location. PA1 Allows consumers to easily locate services having certain specified characteristics, for example, gambling services offering the most favorable odds and/or specified rules for a particular game or games. PA1 Helps consumers obtain certain classes of tickets to certain classes of events. PA1 information exhaust; PA1 user questionnaires, PA1 audit trail related information; PA1 aggregated usage data; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to user behavior; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to user preferences; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to user personality; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to group behavior; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to group preferences; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to group culture PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to organizational behavior; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to organizational preferences; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to organizational culture; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to institutional behavior; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to institutional preferences; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to institutional culture; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to governmental behavior; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to governmental preferences; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to governmental culture; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to societal behavior; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to societal preferences; PA1 information measuring or otherwise related to societal culture; PA1 object history related information; PA1 other types of information; PA1 any combinations of information including, some, all or none of the information set forth above. PA1 one or more control sets; PA1 various rules and/or consequences; PA1 information used by control sets; PA1 certificates; PA1 other rights management information. PA1 content object information; PA1 user information PA1 computer related information PA1 combinations of information. PA1 people PA1 computers PA1 content PA1 events PA1 transactions PA1 objects of all types PA1 combinations of things; PA1 combinations of people and things. PA1 implemented by computer and/or other means; and/or PA1 based upon discrete and/or continous mathematics; and/or PA1 using nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio and/or any other measurement scale and/or measurement mode; and/or PA1 including parameter data; and/or PA1 entail linear and/or non-linear estimation methods; and/or PA1 any other methods. PA1 Statistical techniques that identify one or more clusters of cases sharing similar profiles and/or features, including any of the family of cluster analysis methods, for example, those described in Hartigan (Hartigan, J. A., Clustering Algorithms, New York: Wiley, 1975); PA1 Methods for numerical taxonomy, for example, as described, for example, by Sneath and Sokal (Sneath, Peter H. A. and Robert R. Sokal, Numerical Taxonomy: The Principals and Practice of Numerical Classification, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973); PA1 Any of the methods for cluster analysis, factor analysis, components analysis, and other similar data reduction/classifiction methods, for example, those implemented in popular statistical and data analysis systems known to those skilled in the arts, for example, SAS and/or SPSS; PA1 Pattern classification techniques, including components analysis and neural approaches, for example, those described by, for example, Schurmann (Schurmann, Jurgen, Pattern Classification: A Unified View of Statistical and Neural Approaches, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966); PA1 Statistical techniques that identify one or more underlying dimensions of qualities, traits, features, characteristics, etc., and assign parameter data indicating the extent to which a given case has, possesses, and/or may be characterized by the underlying dimension, factor, class, etc. and/or result in the definition of at least one class and/or the assignment of at least one case to at least one class, for example, as described by Harman (Harman, Harry H., Modern Factor Analysis, 3rd ed. rev., Chicago: University of Chicago Press), and/or as implemented by SAS and/or SPSS and/or other statistical analysis programs. PA1 Statistical methods that employ fuzzy logic and/or fuzzy measurement and/or whose assignment to at least one class entails probabilities different from 1 or zero. PA1 Baysian statistical classification techniques that use estimates of prior probabilities in determining class definitions and/or the assignment of at least one case to at least one class; PA1 Any statistical and/or graphical classification and/or data reduction method that uses rotation of reference axes, regardless of whether orthogonal or oblique rotations are used, for example, as described in Harman, and as implemented in SAS and/or SPSS and/or other statistical programs; PA1 Statistical methods for two and three way multidimensional scaling, for example, the methods described by Kruskal and Wish (Krusgal Joseph B. and Myron Wish, Multidimensional Scaling, Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1978), and/or by Shepard, et al. (Shepard, Roger N., A. Kimball Romney, and Sara Beth Nerlove, Multidimensional Scaling: Theory and Applications in the Behavioral Sciences, New York: Seminar Press, 1972); PA1 Knowedge based approaches to classification, for example, as described by, for example, Stefik (Stefik, Mark, "Introduction to Knowledge Systems," San Francisco: Morgan Kauffman, 1995); and PA1 any other classification techniques or arrangements pre-existing or yet to be developed. PA1 a "VDE" ("virtual distribution environment") providing, for example, a family of technologies by which applications can be created, modified, and/or reused; PA1 a standardized control and container environment which facilitates interoperability of electronic appliances and efficient creation of electronic commerce applications and models; PA1 a programmable, secure electronic transaction management foundation having reusable and extensible executable components; PA1 seamless integration into host operating environments of electronic appliances or direct employment of such technologies in electronic commerce applications; PA1 cyberspace digital content rights and transaction management control systems that may operate in whole or in part over Internets, Intranets, optical media and/or over other digital communications media; PA1 support of an electronic "world" within which most forms of electronic transaction such as content usage, distribution, auditing, reporting, and payment activities can be managed; PA1 Transaction Operating Systems (operating systems that have integrated secure, distributed, and programmable transaction and/or event management capabilities); PA1 Rights Operating Systems (operating systems that have integrated, distributed, and programmable rights management capabilities); PA1 secure content container management; PA1 clearinghouse functions related to content usage; PA1 overall electronic commerce architectures that provide electronic commerce automation through the use of secure, distributed digital events management; PA1 the general enablement of traditional commerce behavior in the digital commerce world; PA1 enhanced inherent, distributed efficiencies of conventional commerce practices with powerful, reliable electronic security, and with the programmability and electronic automation efficiencies made possible by modern computing; PA1 trusted operation of a freely configurable, highly efficient, general purpose digital marketplace in which parties "come together" to establish commercial relationships; PA1 support of "real" commerce in an electronic form (that is, the progressive creation of commercial relationships that form, over time, a network of interrelated agreements representing a value chain business model); PA1 enabling content control information to develop through the interaction of (and/or negotiation between) securely created and independently submitted sets of content and/or appliance control information; PA1 interconnection of appliances providing a foundation for much greater electronic interaction and the evolution of electronic commerce; PA1 a variety of capabilities for implementing an electronic commerce environment; PA1 a neutral, general purpose platform for commerce; PA1 an architecture that avoids reflecting specific distribution biases, administrative and control perspectives, and content types; PA1 a broad-spectrum, fundamentally configurable and portable, electronic transaction control, distributing, usage, auditing, reporting, and payment operating environment; PA1 systems and methods that uniquely enable electronic commerce participants to protect their interests during the sequence of activities comprising an electronic commerce model; PA1 ability of commerce participants to assure protection by specifying rules and controls that monitor and enforce their interests during the processing of remote commerce events; PA1 permitting commerce participants to efficiently participate in, and manage, the distributed electronic activities of a digital value chain; PA1 allowing commerce model participants to, for example, securely and cooperatively govern and automate the distributed electronic activities comprising their collective electronic business models; PA1 allowing commerce model participants to securely contribute electronic rules and controls that represent their "electronic" interests; PA1 rules and controls that extend a "Virtual Presence.TM." through which the commerce participants govern remote value chain activities according to their respective, mutually agreed to rights; PA1 a Virtual Presence taking the form of participant specified electronic conditions (rules and controls) that must be satisfied before an electronic event may occur; PA1 rules and controls that enforce the party's rights during "downstream" electronic commerce activities; PA1 control information delivered by, and/or otherwise available for use with, the VDE content containers constituting one or more "proposed" electronic agreements which manage the use and/or consequences of the use of such content and which can enact the terms and conditions of agreements involving multiple parties and their various rights and obligations; PA1 rules and controls from multiple parties forming aggregate control sets ("Cooperative Virtual Presence.TM.") that ensure that electronic commerce activities will be consistent with the agreements amongst value chain participants; PA1 control sets defining the conditions which govern interaction with protected digital content (disseminated digital content, appliance control information, etc.); PA1 conditions used to control not only digital information use itself, but also the consequences of such use to protect the individual interests of commerce participants and form cooperative, efficient, and flexible electronic commerce business models; PA1 true, efficient electronic cooperative governance of value chain activities; PA1 empowering each commerce model participant to securely deliver, and persistently maintain control over, the rules and controls they contributed specifying constraints on, and consequences of, electronic conduct; PA1 extending Cooperative Virtual Presence over time and involving the execution of controls, and the use of content, at physically dispersed locations, such as Internet user sites; PA1 a chain of handling and control in which dispersed locations are bound together through the use of secure communication techniques and unique, secure digital container technology; PA1 ability to preserve the rights of parties through a series of transactions which may occur at different times and different locations; PA1 extending the ability of electronic content providers to control the use of proprietary information; PA1 allowing content providers to limit use to authorized activities and amounts; PA1 allowing participants (e.g., actors, directors, script and other writers, musicians, studios, publishers, distributors, retailers, advertisers, credit card services, content end-users, and others) involved in a business model to have the ability to embody their range of agreements and requirements, including use limitations, into an "extended" agreement comprising an overall electronic business model; PA1 representing such an extended agreement by electronic content control information which can automatically enforce agreed upon rights and obligations; PA1 a competitive, general purpose electronic commerce architecture supporting the distributed, secure "unmanned" electronic interaction; PA1 distributing such capabilities across networks and involving the sequence (or web) of distributed activities underlying electronic value chains; PA1 cooperative electronic governance of distributed electronic commerce processes that optimizes electronic commerce value propositions; PA1 the capability of electronically, remotely representing the interests of commerce participants to support efficient, flexible, commerce model automation; PA1 enabling rules and controls that are independently contributed by multiple parties to securely merge together and form the collective rules and controls sets that reflect the electronic commerce agreements between parties; PA1 using rules and controls sets to collectively, automatically, govern remote electronic conduct; PA1 securely managing the integration of control information provided by two or more parties; PA1 constructing electronic agreements between VDE participants that represents a "negotiation" between the control requirements of two or more parties and enacts the terms and conditions of a resulting agreement; PA1 ensuring and/or enforcing the rights of each party to an electronic agreement regarding a wide range of electronic activities related to electronic information and/or appliance usage; PA1 the ability to broadly support electronic commerce by securely managing independently delivered VDE component objects containing control information (normally in the form of method, data, or load module VDE objects); PA1 using independently delivered control information to negotiate with senior and other pre-existing content control information to securely form derived control information; PA1 ensuring that all requirements specified by derived control information are satisfied before VDE controlled content is accessed or otherwise used; PA1 ensuring that all load modules and any mediating data which are listed by the derived control information as required are available and perform their required function; PA1 use of independently delivered control components to allow electronic commerce participants to freely stipulate their business requirements and trade offs; PA1 allowing electronic commerce, through the various control requirements stipulated by VDE participants, to evolve into forms of business which are the most efficient, competitive and useful--much as with traditional, non-electronic commerce; PA1 providing commerce participants with the ability to freely fashion the chains of handling and control pathways that protect data and processes and the freedom to shape the models within which their Virtual Presence operates--allowing commerce participants to optimally formulate their electronic commerce value propositions; PA1 VDEs configured to support the various underlying agreements between parties that define important electronic commerce pathways of handling for electronic content, content and/or appliance control information, content and/or appliance usage information and payment and/or credit; PA1 allowing content creators and other providers to specify the pathways that, partially or fully, must be used to disseminate commercially distributed property content, content control information, payment administrative content, and/or associated usage reporting information; PA1 empowering commerce participants, subject to the rules and controls previously set in a value chain, to freely fashion control models implementing their Virtual Presence by using GUI templates or rights programming languages employing commerce/rights management components; PA1 component based control methods that allow the present inventions to efficiently operate as a highly configurable content control system; PA1 content control models that can be iteratively and asynchronously shaped, modified, and otherwise updated to accommodate the needs of VDE participants; PA1 iterative and/or concurrent multiple participant processes through the submission and use of secure, control information components (e.g., executable code such as load modules and/or methods, and/or associated data); PA1 control information for Virtual Presence employed in protected processing environment nodes located at user sites to ensure that digital events are governed in accordance with the collective rights of commerce model participants; PA1 digital events that launch or require other digital events; PA1 digital events that may include, for example, content use consequences such as collection of audit information, secure communication of such information, payment for content use, or satisfaction of any other electronically stated condition; PA1 events that occur within either the secure setting of a local node, or more widely within the secure environment of a distributed system of nodes; PA1 the association of Virtual Presence rules and controls with protected information enclosed within one or more electronic content containers to achieve a high order of configurability for Virtual Presence chains of handling and control; PA1 distribution using VDE that may package both the electronic content and control information into the same VDE container, and/or may involve the delivery to an end-user site of different pieces of the same VDE managed property from plural separate remote locations and/or in plural separate VDE content containers and/or employing plural different delivery means; PA1 content control information that is partially or fully delivered separately from its associated content to a user VDE installation in one or more VDE administrative objects; PA1 delivery of portions of said control information from one or more sources; PA1 making control information available for use by access from a user's VDE installation secure sub-system to one or more remote VDE secure sub-systems and/or VDE compatible, certified secure remote locations; PA1 use of delivery means that may include electronic data storage means such as optical disks for delivering one portion of said information and broadcasting and/or telecommunicating means for other portions of said information; PA1 allowing a content provider to deliver different business rules to a large corporate customer, compared with rules delivered to "retail" customers; PA1 supporting separation of content and Virtual Presence controls to allow a provider to associate different control sets with the same content--and not requiring the provider to create one set of content controls that apply to all types of customers; PA1 allowing content provider modification over time of rules and controls to reflect sales, new pricing, special discounts, etc.--while limiting this right by rules and controls provided by other parties having more senior rights; PA1 employing secure object container technology to efficiently implement Virtual Presence chains of handling and control; PA1 use of software container technology to significantly facilitate the organized dissemination of digital content, including the specialized form of digital content constituting rights control information; PA1 employing object software technology and using object technology to form containers for delivery of at least in part encrypted or otherwise secured information; PA1 using containers that contain electronic content products or other electronic information and some or all of their associated permissions (control) information; PA1 distributing container objects along pathways involving content providers and/or content users; PA1 securely moving containers between nodes of a VDE arrangement, which nodes operate VDE foundation software and execute control methods to enact electronic information usage control and/or administration models; PA1 employing delivered containers both for distributing VDE control instructions (information) and/or to encapsulate and electronically distribute content which has been at least partially secured; PA1 supporting the essential needs of electronic commerce value propositions by uniting fundamental configurability with secure Virtual Presence; PA1 virtual presence across virtual networks in accordance with the underlying agreement amongst commerce model participants to allow each participant to enjoy secure, reliable electronic automation of commerce models; PA1 allowing each rights holder's Virtual Presence at a remote site to possess the sole authority to administer or delegate the participant's electronic rights; PA1 capabilities that contribute to establishing an environment of trusted cooperative governance; PA1 practical enhancements relating to the establishment of secure event management and the maintenance of secure audit, encryption, budget, and other relevant information; PA1 control structures for an overall, distributed, secure rights/event administration environment; PA1 processes for interaction between independently delivered rules and controls, including electronic negotiation; PA1 creating distributed rights operating systems; PA1 integrating control processes into host operating environments; PA1 secure semiconductors to support protected processing environments; PA1 a secure, programmable, digital event management component architecture in which components are fully assembleable and reusable; PA1 differing assemblages of components formed to reflect an exhaustive array of commerce model functional capabilities, overall model implementations, and ad hoc event management scenarios; PA1 support for the full range of digital content types, delivery modes, and reporting and other administrative activities; PA1 traveling objects; PA1 smart agents; PA1 "atomic" load module operation to support "sparse space," cost-effective, secure processing semiconductors; PA1 smart card and other traveling client nodes; PA1 creating rights management software container technologies, including extraction, embedding, and other secure container content management processes; PA1 Chain of Handling and Control generation of secure objects (containers) and associated control information; PA1 audit reconciliation and usage pattern evaluation processes; PA1 specialized cryptographic implementations; PA1 use of a specialized electronic rights and commerce language, unique applications for fingerprinting and/or watermarking technologies, secure control structures, the formulation of new types of metering technologies, reciprocal event management (employing dispersed user sites) for automating web-like commerce models, and many other designs and capabilities; PA1 mechanisms to persistently maintain trusted content usage and reporting control information through both a sufficiently secure chain of handling of content and content control information and through various forms of usage of electronic information; PA1 rights management technology supporting persistent, distributed controls; PA1 means enabling continuing Virtual Presence through Chains of Handling and Control; PA1 persistency of control as a unique and fundamentally important attribute underlying Virtual Presence and Chain of Handling and Control for enabling true commerce behavior in cyberspace including ad hoc relationships and activities, distributed processes, and reliable enforcement of agreements between parties; PA1 Persistent Virtual Presence controls that continue to be enforced--to the extent required by the controls themselves--as protected digital content is, for example, used and reused, copied and further distributed, extracted and embedded, audited and reported; PA1 persistency responsive to rules and controls associated with electronic events, that causes new secure content containers to be created automatically by systems and methods supplying the procession of secure transport vehicles required by Chain of Handling and Control for conveying disseminated content, associated rules and controls, and audit information and payment; PA1 container creation to carry extracted content, payment tokens, control information, audit information, and the like; PA1 securely generated containers carrying with them rules and controls stipulated by rules and controls associated with one or more triggered electronic events; PA1 capabilities for persistency and independent secure delivery and merging of rules and controls that provide technical means for ensuring that dynamic user behavior can be encouraged, rather than discouraged; PA1 dynamic user behavior encouraged as a critical link in building ad hoc relationships and cost-effectively distributing content, while simultaneously ensuring that rights holders are protected and retain control over their business models; PA1 enabling ad hoc behavior that frees users from constraints on their conduct resulting from inflexible, first generation technologies; PA1 support for enterprising behavior that is characteristic of traditional commerce resulting in more efficient and more satisfying electronic commerce experiences; PA1 general purpose character electronic commerce technologies provided by a combination of important capabilities including component, object oriented, programmable control language; secure specialized container technology; independent delivery of secure control information mechanisms; Chain of Handling and Control persistency of control mechanisms; event driven operating system functions; and the advanced security architecture--allowing multiple simultaneous models to evolve, and practically and efficiently operate; PA1 general purpose rights and event management architecture that is intrinsically reusable for many simultaneous models--providing enormous competitive economic advantages over technologies that are essentially single model by design; PA1 commerce architecture client nodes that are basic pieces of reusable cyberspace infrastructure; PA1 generalized configurability resulting, in part, from decomposition of generalized requirements for supporting electronic commerce and data security into a broad range of constituent "atomic" and higher level components (such as load modules, data elements, and methods) that may be variously aggregated together to form control methods for commercial electronic agreements and data security arrangements; PA1 a secure operating environment employing VDE foundation elements along with securely deliverable VDE components that enable electronic commerce models and relationships to develop; PA1 the unfolding of distribution models in which content providers, over time, can expressly agree to, or allow, subsequent content providers and/or users to participate in shaping the controls for, and consequences of, use of electronic content and/or appliances; PA1 a very broad range of the functional attributes important for supporting simple to very complex electronic commerce and data security activities; PA1 electronic information and/or appliance usage control (including distribution), security, usage auditing, reporting, other administration, and payment arrangements; PA1 capabilities that rationalize the support of electronic commerce and electronic transaction management stemming from the reusability of control structures and user interfaces for a wide variety of transaction management related activities; PA1 content usage control, data security, information auditing, and electronic financial activities that can be supported with tools that are reusable, convenient, consistent, and familiar; PA1 a general purpose Rights Operating System employing a reusable kernel and rights language components that provides the capabilities and integration needed for the advanced commerce operating systems of the future; PA1 a general purpose, reusable electronic commerce capabilities that all participants can rely on will become as important as any other capability of operating systems; PA1 such a rights operating system providing rights and auditing operating system functions and other operating system functions--the rights and auditing operating system functions securely handling tasks that relate to virtual distribution environment; PA1 secure processing units and/or protected processing environments that provide and/or support many of the security functions of the rights and auditing operating system functions; PA1 an overall operating system designed from the beginning to include the rights and auditing operating system functions plus the other operating system functions--or incorporation of the rights and auditing operating system functions as an add-on to a preexisting operating system providing the other operating system functions; PA1 operating system integration and the distributed operating systems; and PA1 a rational approach--a transaction/distribution control standard--allowing all participants in VDE the same foundation set of hardware control and security, authoring, administration, and management tools, for widely varying types of information, business market model and/or personal objectives;
Today on the Internet and you can also find nearly anything and everything you can possibly imagine, although finding exactly what you really want may be time consuming and frustrating. This is because the Internet and World Wide Web provide perhaps the best example of an environment that is particularly hard to navigate. There are an overwhelming number of choices--too many to easily relate to or understand--and many of which are terribly hard to find, even using the various Web searching "engines." The Internet is particularly exciting because it has the potential to provide to nearly everyone access to nearly every kind of information. Information can also come from an almost limitless variety of sources. But today, so much information on the Internet is superficial or useless, and too many choices can be more a curse than a blessing if you don't have meaningful, easy ways to eliminate all but a relatively few choices. And the situation will only become much worse as more Web sites appear, and as digital information is distributed in "objects" or "containers" providing enhanced security and privacy but possibly more difficult access and identifiability.
As time passes, more and more valuable and desirable information will be available in digital containers. However, unless tools are developed to solve the problem, there will be no efficient or satisfying means to sort through the potentially trillions of digital containers available on tens of millions of Web pages, to find containers satisfying a search or fulfilling an information need. Furthermore, existing information searching mechanisms typically provide no way to readily perform a search that matches against underlying commercial requirements of providers and users.
It Will Be Difficult to Find Rights Management Scenarios Matching Your Requirements
If, for example, you have an auto repair newsletter and you want to create an article containing information on auto repair of Ford Bronco vehicles, you may wish to look for detailed, three dimensional, step-by-step "blow-up" mechanical images of Ford Bronco internal components. Perhaps these are available from hundreds of sources (including from private individuals using new, sophisticated rendering graphics programs, as well as from engineering graphics firms). Given the nature of your newsletter, you have decided that your use of such images should cost you no more than one penny to redistribute per copy in quantities of several thousand--this low cost being particularly important since you will have numerous other costs per issue for acquiring rights to other useful digital information products which you reuse and, for example, enhance in preparing a particular issue. You therefore wish to search and match against rights management rules associated with such products--non-limiting examples of which include:
If you can't match against your commercial requirements, you may be forced to waste enormous amounts of time sifting through all of the available products matching Ford Bronco internal components--or you may settle for a product that is far less than the best available (settling on the first adequate product that you review).
Computers Don't Necessarily Make It Easier to Find Things
Anyone who has ever used the Internet or the World Wide Web knows that networks, computers and electronics, when used together, do not necessarily make the overall task of finding information easier. In fact, computers can make the process seem much worse. Most Internet users will probably agree that trying to find things you are interested on the Internet can be a huge time drain. And the results can be very unsatisfactory. The rapid growth rate of information available on the Web is continually making this process of finding desired information even harder. You can spend many hours looking for information on a subject that interests you. In most cases, you will eventually find some information of value--but even using today's advanced computer search tools and on-line directories, it can take hours or days. With the advent of the technology advances developed by InterTrust Technologies Corp. and others, publishers will find it far more appealing to make their valuable digital information assets available on-line and to allow extractions and modifications of copyrighted materials that will vastly expand the total number of information objects. This will enormously worsen the problem, as the availability of valuable information products greatly expands.
It Is Usually Hard to Find Things On the Internet
There are many reasons why it is difficult to find what you want on the Internet. One key reason is that, unlike a public library, for example, there is no universal system to classify or organize electronic information to provide information for matching with what's important to the person who is searching. Unlike a library, it is difficult on the Internet to efficiently browse over many items since the number of possible choices may be much larger than the number of books on a library shelves and since electronic classification systems typically do not provide much in the way of physical cues. For example, when browsing library shelves, the size of a book, the number of pictures in the book, or pictures on magazine covers may also help you find what you are interested in. Such physical cue information may be key to identifying desired selections from library resources. Unfortunately, most digital experiences typically do not provide such cues without actually loading and viewing the work in digital form.
Thus, another reason why the electronic or digital world can make it even harder to find information than ever before has to do with the physical format of the information. The digital information may provide few or no outward cues or other physical characteristics that could help you to even find out what it is--let alone determine whether or not you are interested in it, unless such cues are provided through special purpose informational (for example, graphical) displays. On the Internet, everyone can be an electronic publisher, and everyone can organize their offerings differently--using visual cues of their own distinctive design (e.g., location on a web page, organization by their own system for guiding choices). As one example, one publisher might use a special purpose graphical representation such as the video kiosk to support an electronic video store. Other publishers may use different graphical representations altogether.
Historically, there has been no particular need for consistent selection standards in conventional, non-electronic store based businesses. Indeed, it is often the unique display and choice selection support for customers' decision processes that make the difference between a successful store and a failure. But in the electronic world--where your choice is not among a few stores but rather is a choice among potentially thousands or even millions of possibly useful web sites and truly vast numbers of digital containers--the lack of a consistent system for describing commercially significant variables that in the "real" world may normally be provided by the display context and/or customized information guidance resource (catalog book, location of goods by size, etc.) seriously undermines the ability of digital information consumers to identify their most desirable choices.
Adding to this absence of conventional cues, the enormity of available choices made available in cyberspace means that the digital information revolution, in order to be practical, must provide profoundly more powerful tools to filter potentially desirable opportunities from the over abundance of choices. In sum, the absence of the ability to efficiently filter from a dimensionally growing array of choices, can completely undermine the value of having such a great array of choices.
In the "real" world, commercial choices are based on going to the right "store" and using the overall arrays of available information to identify one's selection. However, as information in digital and electronic form becomes more and more important, the problem of relating to the vast stores of information will become a nightmare. For example, picture yourself in a store where each shopping aisle is miles long, and each item on the shelf is packaged in the same size and color container. In an actual store, the product manufacturers put their products into brightly colored and distinctively shaped packages to make sure the consumer can readily find and select their product. These visual cues distinguish, for example, between a house brand and a specific name brand, between low fat and regular foods, and between family size and small size containers.
On the Internet, a digital "store" is likely to be many stores with vast resources integrating products from many parties. If you were limited to conventional classification and matching mechanisms, you would be unable to sift through all the material to identify the commercially acceptable, i.e., an item representing the right information, at the right price, providing license rights that match your interests. Certainly, if each digital package looks the same, you are at a loss in making reasonable decisions. You can't tell one from another just by looking at it.
While information written on the "outside" of a digital package may be useful, you simply don't have the time to read all the packages, and anyway, each packager may use different words to describe the same thing and the descriptions may be difficult to understand. Some people may write a lot of information on the outside of their package, and others may write little or nothing on the outside of the package. If there is no universal system agreed upon by everyone for defining what information should be written on the outside of the package and how it should be formatted, using such a store would be painfully difficult even if you could limit the number of choices you were evaluating.
There is a Need For Efficient and Effective Selection Based, at Least in Part, on Rights Management Information
Unlike a real store where all breakfast cereals are shelved together and all soft drinks are in the same aisle, there may be no single, universal way to display the organization of all of the information in a "digital store" since, by its nature, digital information frequently has many implications and associated rules. For example, there now exist highly developed rights management systems such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,900, to Ginter et al., issued Apr. 6, 1999, for "Systems And Methods For Secure Transaction Management And Electronic Rights Protection (hereafter "Ginter et al")--the entire disclosure (including the drawings) of which is expressly incorporated into this application as if expressly set forth herein. Many rules associated with any given piece of digital information may, combinatorially, given rise to many, very different, commercial contexts that will influence the use decisions of different potential users in many different ways (e.g., cost, auditing, re-use, redistribution, regulatory requirements, etc.).
No readily available systems developed for the digital information arena provide similarly satisfying means that describe the many commercial rules and parameters found in individual custom catalogs, merchandise displays, product specifications, and license agreements. Further, no readily available mechanisms allow "surfing" across vast choice opportunities where electronic matching can single out those few preferred items.
As one example, picking an appropriate image may involve any or all of the following:
No previously readily available technology allows one to efficiently make selections based on such criteria.
By their nature, and using the present inventions in combination with, amongst other things, "Ginter et al", the packages in a digital store may be "virtual" in nature--that is, they may be all mixed up to create many, differing products that can be displayed to a prospective customer organized in many different ways. This display may be a "narrowcasting" to a customer based upon his matching priorities, available digital information resources (e.g., repository, property, etc.) and associated, available classification information. In the absence of an effective classification and matching system designed to handle such information, digital information of a particular kind might be just about anywhere in the store, and very difficult to find since the organization of the stores digital information resources have not been "dynamically" shaped to the matching interests of the potential customer.
These Inventions Solve These Problems
The present inventions can help to solve these problems. It can give you or help you to find the things you like, need or want. For example, it can deliver to you, (including narrowcasting to you), or help you to find:
The present inventions can expand your horizons by helping you to find interesting or important things, things that you enjoy, things that optimize your business efficiency, and things that help you make the best digital products or services you can--even if you didn't know precisely what or how to look for what you may need. It can also help you by allowing things you didn't know existed or know enough to look for--but that you may be interested in, want or need--to find you.
The Present Inventions Can Use "Metaclasses" to Take Multiple Classifications Into Account
In some areas, multiple classifications may already exist and thus it is important for a consumer to be able to find what he or she is looking for while taking into account not only that there may be multiple classifications, but also that some classifications may be more authoritative than others. For example, Consumer Reports may be more authoritative on certain topics than more casual reviews published, for example, in the local weekly newspapers.
As another example, consider a book that rates restaurants according several factors, including, for example, quality, price, type of food, atmosphere, and location. In some locations there may be many guides, but they may review different sets of restaurants. One guide may rate a particular restaurant highly while one or more others may consider it average or even poor. Guides or other sources of ratings, opinions, evaluations, recommendations, and/or value may not be equally authoritative, accurate, and/or useful in differing circumstances. One consumer may consider a guide written by a particular renowned expert to be more authoritative, accurate, and/or useful than a guide reflecting consumer polls or ballots. However, another consumer may prefer the latter because the second consumer may perceive the tastes of those contributing opinions to be closer to his or her own tastes than those of the experts.
In accordance with the present inventions, a person may be able to find a restaurant that meets specified criteria--for example, the highest quality, moderately priced Cantonese and/or Hunan Chinese food located in Boston or Atlanta--while weighting the results of the search in favor of reviews from travel books rather than from the local newspapers. As this example indicates, the searching may be according to class of authoritative source (and/or classes sources considered authoritative by the consumer) instead of weighting individual reviewers or sources. Thus in accordance with the present inventions, search may be performed at least in part based on classes of classes, or "metaclasses."
The Present Inventions Can Make Choices Easier
One simple way to look at some examples of the present inventions is as a highly sensitive electronic "matchmaker" that matches people or organizations with their best choices, or even selects choices automatically. The present inventions can match people and/or organizations with things and/or services, things with other things and/or services, and/or even people with other people. For example, the matching can be based on profiles that are a composite of preference profiles of one or more specific users, one or more user groups, and/or organizations--where the contribution of any given specific profile to the composite profile may be weighted according to the specific match circumstances such as the type and/or purpose of a given match activity.
FIG. 5 shows a simplified example of an electronic matchmaker that can match up two people with like interests. Sarah loves hiking, country and western music, gardening, movies and jogging. Mark loves movies, hiking, fast cars, country and western music, and baseball. The electronic matchmaker can look at the interests, personalities and/or other characteristics of these two people and determine that they are compatible and should be together--while maintaining, if desired, the confidentiality of personal information. That is, unlike conventional matchmaking services, the present inventions can keep personal information hidden from the service provider and all other parties and perform matching within a protected processing environment through the use of encryption and protected processing environment-based matching analysis.
For example, certain matching of facts that are maintained for authenticity may be first performed to narrow the search universe. Then, certain other matching of facts that are maintained for secrecy can be performed. For example, matching might be based on shared concerns such as where two parties who have a given disability (such as cancer or HIV infection) that is certified by an authority such as a physician who is certified to perform such certification; or the same income level and/or bank account (as certified by an employer and/or financial authority such as a bank). Some or all of such secret information may or may not be released to matched parties, as they may have authorized and/or as may have been required by law when a match is achieved (which itself may be automatically managed within a protected processing environment through the use of controls contributed by a governmental authority).
FIG. 5A shows an electronic matchmaker that matches an electronic publisher with mystery stories for his quarterly electronic mystery anthology, where the matching is based on price, redistribution rights, editing rights, attribution requirements (attributing authorship to the author), third party rating of the writers quality, length of story, and/or the topical focus of the story (for example). Here, rule managed business requirements of publisher and writers are matched allowing for great efficiency in matching, coordination of interests, and automation of electronic business processes and value chain activities.
The convenience of the "electronic matchmaker" provided in accordance with the present inventions extends to commerce in physical goods as well--as illustrated in FIG. 5b. In this non-limiting example, the electronic matchmaker is communicating to the consumer via the Internet and World Wide Web. The matchmaker has found the lowest quoted price for a Jeep sports utility model given, in this one example, a multitude of factors including:
Membership in these associations and alumni status may be conveyed or indicated by possession of a special electronic document called a "digital certificate," "membership card," and/or other digital credential that warrants or attests to some fact or facts.
Thus, the electronic matchmaker provided in accordance with these inventions can also match people with things. FIG. 6 shows two people, Harry and Tim. Harry loves sports most of all, but also wants to know a little about what is going on in the business world. The business world is most important to Tim, but he likes to keep up with the baseball scores. The electronic matchmaker in accordance with these inventions can learn about what Harry and Tim each like, and can provide information to a publisher so the publisher can narrowcast a newspaper or other publication customized for each of them. A newspaper company can narrowcast to Harry lots of sports information in his newspaper, and it can narrowcast to Tim mostly business information in his newspaper. In another example, Harry's newspaper may be uniquely created for him, differing from all other customized newspapers that emphasize sports over business information. But information that Harry and Tim respectively want to maintain as authentic or secret can be managed as such.
The electronic matchmaker can also match things with other things. FIG. 7 shows how the electronic matchmaker can help a student put together a school project about big cats. The electronic matchmaker can help the student locate and select articles and other material about various kinds of big cats. The electronic matchmaker can, for example, determine that different articles about tigers, lions and cheetahs are all about big cats--but that articles about elephants and giraffes are not about big cats. If there is a charge for certain items, the electronic matchmaker can find only those items that the student can afford, and can make sure the student has the right to print pictures of the big cats. The electronic matchmaker can help the student to collect this information together so the student can make a colorful poster about big cats.
The electronic matchmaker can match up all sorts of different kinds of things. FIG. 8 shows the electronic matchmaker looking at three different objects. The matchmaker can determine that even though objects A and C are not identical, they are sufficiently similar that they should be grouped together for a certain purpose. The electronic matchmaker can determine that for this purpose, object B is too different and should not be grouped with objects A and C. For a different purpose, the electronic matchmaker may determine that objects A, B and C ought to be grouped together.
The Present Inventions Can Make Use of Rights Management Information
How does the electronic matchmaker find out the information it needs to match or classify people and things? In accordance with a feature provided by these inventions, the electronic matchmaker gets information about people and things by using automated, computerized processes. Those processes can use a special kind of information sometimes known as rights management information. Rights management information may include electronic rules and/or their consequences. The electronic matchmaker can also use information other than rights management information.
An example of rights management information includes certain records about what a computer does and how it does it. In one simple example, records may give permission to read a particular news article if that the customer is willing to pay a nickel to purchase the article and that the nickel may be paid using a budget provided by a credit card company or with electronic cash. A customer might, for example, seek only news articles from providers that take electronic cash and/or process information with a certain information clearinghouse as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/699,712 to Shear et al., filed Aug. 12, 1996, for "Trusted Infrastructure Support Systems, Methods And Techniques For Secure Electronic Commerce Electronic Transactions And Rights Management" (hereafter "Shear et al")--the entire disclosure (including the drawings) of which is expressly incorporated into this application as if expressly set forth herein.
The Present Inventions Can Maintain Privacy
FIG. 9 shows one way in which the electronic matchmaker can get information about a person. In this example, the electronic matchmaker asks Jill to fill out a computer questionnaire about what she likes. The questionnaire can also ask Jill what information she wishes to be maintained as authentic, and what information (e.g., encrypted by the system) may be used for secure matching only within a protected processing environment and can not be released to another party, or only to certain specified parties. The questionnaire answering process may be directly managed by a protected processing environment to ensure integrity and secrecy, as appropriate.
For example, the questionnaire may ask Jill whether she likes baseball and whether she is interested in volcanoes. The electronic matchmaker can also ask Jill if it is okay to look at records her computer maintains about what she has used her computer for in the past. These computer records (which the computer can maintain securely so that no one can get to them without Jill's permission) can keep a history of everything Jill has looked at using her computer over the past month and/or other time period--this process being managed, for example, through the use of a system such as described in the "Ginter et al."
Looking at FIG. 10, Jill may have used her computer last week to look at information about baseball, volcanoes and Jeeps. With Jill's permission, the electronic matchmaker can employ a protected processing environment 154 (schematically shown here as a tamper-resistant "chip" within the computer--but it can be hardware-based, software-based, or a combination of hardware and software) to look at the computer's history records and use them to help match Jill up with other kinds of things she is or may be interested in. For example, the electronic matchmaker can let an electronic publisher or other provider or information gatherer (e.g., market survey conductor, etc.) know that Jill is interested in team sports, geology and sports utility vehicles with or without more revealing detail--as managed by Jill's choices and/or rights management rules and controls executing in her computer's protected processing environment 154. The provider can send information to Jill--either automatically or at Jill's request--about other, related things that Jill may be interested in.
FIG. 11 shows an example of how rights management and other information Jill's computer maintains about her past usage can be useful in matching Jill up with things she may need or want. The computer history records can, for example, show that Jill looked at hockey information for three hours and football information for five hours during the past week. They can indicate that Jill uses a Discover credit card to pay for things, usually spends less that $10 per item, averages $40 per month in such expenses, and almost never buys new programs for her computer.
The electronic matchmaker can, with and subject to Jill's permission, look at and analyze this information. As one example, the electronic matchmaker can analyze relevant rules and controls provided by third parties who have rights in such information--where such rules are controlled, for example, by Jill's computer's protected processing environment 154. It can also look at and analyze Jill's response to computer questionnaires indicating that she likes baseball and football. The electronic matchmaker can, based on all of this information, automatically select and obtain videos and/or other publications for Jill about team sports and that cost less than $10 and that accept payment using a Discover card, so that Jill can preview and select those in which she may have a particular interest and desire to acquire.
FIG. 12 shows that the electronic matchmaker can take into account computer history records for lots of different people. The electronic matchmaker can work with other rights management related computer systems such as "usage clearinghouses" (non-limiting examples of which are described in each of "Ginter et al" and "Shear et al") to efficiently collect rights management related information. The ability to collect history records from many different people can be very useful. For example, this can allow the electronic matchmaker to distinguish between things that are very popular and things that are not so popular.
The present inventions provide great increases in efficiency and convenience. It can save you a lot of time and effort. It can allow computers to do a lot of the work so you don't have to. It can allow you to compete with larger businesses--and allow large business to function more efficiently--by allowing the location of resources particularly appropriate for certain business activities. You can delegate certain complex tasks to a computer, freeing you to be more productive and satisfied with electronic activities. These automated processes can be "smart" without being intrusive. For example, they can learn about your behavior, preferences, changing interests, and even your personality, and can then predict your future interests based on your past behavior and interest expressions. These processes can ensure confidentiality and privacy--so that no one can find out detailed information about you without your consent. Across the full range of personal and business activities, the present inventions allow a degree of basic efficiency, including automation and optimization of previously very time consuming activities, so that interests and possible resources are truly best matched.
The present inventions handle many kinds of important issues and addresses the widest range of information and rights and automation possibilities. For example, the present inventions are capable of handling (but are not limited to):
It can reflect and employ all kinds of rights to optimize matching processes, including:
It can employ all kinds of parameter information, including:
Pricing (for example the price of a specific item) can be used in matching based upon price per unit and/ or total price for a volume purchase, price for renting, right to redistribute, cost for redistributing items, etc.
Privacy can be used for establishing matching contingent upon usage reporting requirements for viewing, printing, extracting, dedistributing, listening, payment, and/or requiring the reporting of other information such as personal demographics such as credit worthiness, stored value information, age, sex, marital status, race, religion, and/or usage based generated profiling information based materially upon, for example, a users history of usage of electronic content and/or commercial transactions, etc.
Identity can be used for matching based upon, for example, such as the presence of one or more specific, class, and/or classes of certificates, including, for example, specific participant and/or group of participant, including value chain certificates as described in "Shear et al".
With the inventions described herein, commercial requirement attributes embodied in rules (controls and control parameter data) are employed in classification structures that are referenced by search mechanisms, either, for example, directly through reading rule information maintained in readable (not encrypted) but authentic (protected for integrity) form, through reading rule information maintained securely, through processes employing a protected processing environment 154 of a VDE node, and/or through the creation of one or more indexes and/or like purpose structures, that, directly, and/or through processes employing a protected processing environment 154, automatically compile commercial and other relevant (e.g., societal regulatory information such as a given jurisdiction's copyright, content access and/or taxation regulations) for classification/matching purposes.
The present inventions can employ computer and communication capabilities to identify information, including:
The present inventions thus provide for optimal user, provider, and societal use of electronic cyberspace resources (for example, digital information objects available across the Internet, sent by direct broadcast satellite, transmitted over a cable TV system, and/or distributed on optical disk).
Of particular importance is the notion of classes of content, classes of users, and classes of providers. For example, the present inventions can make use of any/all of the following:
Some Of The Advantageous Features And Characteristics Provided By The Present Inventions
The classification, matching, narrowcasting, analysis, profiling, negotiation, and selection capabilities of the present inventions include the following capabilities (listed items are not mutually exclusive of each other but exemplary samples):
The above capabilities, and others described in this application, are often ideally managed by distributed commerce nodes of a distributed, rights management environment embedded in or otherwise connected to the operating system clients of a distributed computing environment such as described in "Ginter et al" and further described in "Shear et al", and employing, for example, rules, integrity management, container, negotiation, clearinghouse services, and trusted processing capabilities described in "Ginter et al" and "Shear et al".
The Present Inventions Make Use Of Many Kinds Of Information And/Or Data
As discussed above, these inventions provide, among other things, matching, classification, narrowcasting, and/or selection based on rights management and other information. In particular preferred examples, these matching, classification, narrowcasting, and/or selection processes and/or techniques may be based at least in part on rights management information. The rights management information may be an input to the process, it may be an output from the process, and/or the process can be controlled at least in part by rights management information. Information in addition to, or other than, rights management information may also be an input, an output, and/or a basis for controlling, the process and/or techniques.
Rights management information may be directly or indirectly inputted to the matching, classification and/or selection process. For example, rights management controls, rules and/or their consequences may be an input. Examples of such controls and/or rules include object registration related control set data, user related control set data and/or computer related control set data. In addition or alternatively, information provided based on control sets or rules and their consequences may be inputted. The following are examples of such information that may be provided based, for example, on rules and consequences:
The processes, techniques and/or systems provided in accordance with these inventions may output rights management related information such as, for example:
In accordance with various preferred embodiments provided by these inventions, information other than rights management information may also be used, at least in part, as an input, output and/or to control the matching, classification, narrowcasting, and/or selection processes, systems and/or techniques. Examples of such information include:
full text PA2 portions of objects PA2 portions of sub-objects PA2 abstracts PA2 metadata PA2 other content object related information PA2 census information PA2 purchasing habits PA2 credit and financial transaction related information PA2 governmental records PA2 responses to questionnaires PA2 survey results PA2 other user information PA2 identification information PA2 configuration information PA2 other computer related information
Matching/Classifying/Selection
Systems, methods and techniques provided in accordance with these inventions can classify a variety of types of things including, for example:
The matching, classifying and/or selecting processes provided in accordance with these inventions are very flexible and useful. For example, they may be used to associate people with information, information with other information, people with other people, appliances with people, appliances with information, and appliances with other appliances. The present inventions in their preferred examples can associate any kind of information, object or thing with any other kind of information, object or thing.
Different Associations Between Classes and Rights
The processes, systems and/or techniques provided in accordance with these inventions can provide and/or take into account many different kinds of associations between classes and rights. For example, they can look at what rights are available to a user, computer, data structure or any other object. They can also look to rights selected by an object (for example, the subset of rights a user has chosen or otherwise identified). Alternatively or in addition, they can look to rights that have been exercised by a user or in conjunction with an object or other thing, and they can look to the consequences of exercising such a right(s).
Embodiments in Accordance With the Present Inventions Can Be Used to Define Classes Based on Uni-Dimensional and/or Multi-Dimensional Attributes and/or Characteristics
Example processes, systems and/or techniques provided in accordance with these inventions can be used to define classes based on uni-dimensional and/or multi-dimensional attributes and/or characteristics. Any one or more attributes can be used. The attributes and/or characteristics can be flexibly defined. They may define groups or classes containing elements sharing certain attributes in common. There can, for example, be a spectrum of classification that takes into account gray areas as to whether a particular person or thing possesses a certain one or a number of particular attributes and/or characteristics. Or classification may have a higher degree of certainty or definition. For example, a process can test to determine whether particular people or things are inside or outside of particular classes or groups based on one or a number of attributes or characteristics (for example, whether you live in Denver, are under the age of 25 and are single). In accordance with additional specific features provided by these inventions, there may be a minimum number of different classes set up to "cover" a particular situation--with every person or thing either being within or outside of a given, disjoint class or group.
Preferred Examples In Accordance With The Present Inventions Are Extensible to Accommodate Changing Conditions
The systems, methods and/or techniques provided by these inventions are extensible to accommodate changing conditions. For example, they can be made to readily adapt to changes in rules, consequences, topics, areas and/or subjects pertaining to groups such as, for example categories, and any other variable. Furthermore, partially and/or entirely new variables may be introduced to one or more existing sets of variables--for example, to extend or otherwise modify a model to account for additional variables, to apply a new strategy, to adapt to new network and/or installation circumstances, to adapt to new user factors, to change analysis and/or other processing characteristics, and so on.
Preferred Examples In Accordance With The Present Inventions Are Compatible With Pre-Existing or Any New Classification Techniques or Arrangements
The example systems, methods and/or techniques provided by these inventions can be made fully compatible with any classification and/or categorization means, method, process, system, technique, algorithm, program, and/or procedure, presently known or unknown, for determining class and/or category structures, definitions, and/or hierarchies, and/or the assignment of at least one object, person, thing, and/or member to at least one class and/or category, that without limitation may be:
For example, classification can be performed using any or all of the following example classification techniques:
Preferred Examples In Accordance With The Present Inventions Are Fully Compatible With A Wide Array of Technologies Including the Distributed Commerce Utility System and the Virtual Distribution Environment
Systems, methods and/or techniques provided in accordance with these inventions build upon and can work with the arrangements disclosed in "Ginter et al"; "Shear et al"; and other technology related to transaction and/or rights management, security, privacy and/or electronic commerce.
For example, the present inventions can make particular use of the security, efficiency, privacy, and other features and advantages provided by the Virtual Distribution Environment described in "Ginter et al".
As another example, a matching and classification arrangement can be constructed as a distributed commerce utility system as described in "Shear et al". The present inventions can work with other distributed commerce utility systems, and can enhance or be a part of other commerce utility systems.
By way of non-exhaustive, more specific examples, the present inventions can be used in combination with (and/or make use of) any or all of the following broad array of electronic commerce technologies that enable secure, distributed, peer-to-peer electronic rights, event, and/or transaction management capabilities:
Any or all of these features may be used in combination with the inventions disclosed herein.